If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if nuclear waste somehow created a potato baby and then gave it a serious attitude problem, The Being might just be the movie for you. This 1983 creature feature is a glorious slice of low-budget nonsense, packed with terrible monster effects, over-the-top acting, and enough questionable filmmaking decisions to keep any so bad it’s good enthusiast grinning from beginning to end.

The monster itself is a spectacular achievement in looking absolutely terrible. It’s an ugly, lumpy mess of creature effects that seems to have been designed by someone who heard about monsters secondhand and decided to wing it. Fortunately, the filmmakers appear to have recognized the problem, because an awful lot of the creature’s screen time takes place in lighting so dark that you can barely tell what you’re looking at. It’s a clever strategy, really: if the audience can’t see the monster, they can’t complain about how ridiculous it looks. Well, they can, but at least they have to work for it.

Then there’s the plot, which seems to suggest that the only logical explanation for the creature’s existence is a spontaneous conception brought about by nuclear waste contaminating the local drinking water, resulting in some kind of mutated baby-potato hybrid. Does that actually explain anything? Not particularly, but trying to make sense of The Being is probably a waste of time better spent appreciating its sheer absurdity. The movie throws bizarre ideas at the screen with enough confidence that you almost want to reward it for the effort, even when the story threatens to collapse under the weight of its own nonsense.

Thankfully, The Being is exactly the kind of movie that reminds us why bad-movie fans keep digging through the bargain bins. The cheesy effects, questionable storytelling, and gloriously excessive performances combine into an entertaining mess that’s far more fun than its technical shortcomings would suggest. It may not be a great monster movie, but it’s a perfectly respectable piece of cult cinema for anyone who enjoys watching filmmakers swing for the fences and spectacularly miss. Just keep the lights on, because the monster certainly won’t be doing you any favors.

Rabid Grannies is one of those movies where you can occasionally see the makings of a good trashy horror romp, only to have them immediately swallowed by the filmmaking. There are some genuinely grotesque ideas buried in here, and the basic premise of sweet old grandmothers turning into bloodthirsty monsters has plenty of potential. Unfortunately, the movie seems determined to hide whatever fun it might have under a thick layer of technical incompetence.

The biggest problem is the ADR. So much of the dialogue sounds like it was recorded in a completely different room, sometimes at a completely different time, and the synchronization is frequently distracting enough to pull you right out of the movie. Even worse, a lot of the dialogue is borderline unintelligible. Characters talk, you can see their mouths moving, and yet somehow the actual words seem to have been lost somewhere between Belgium and your television.

Then there's the lighting, which may be even more frustrating. Large portions of Rabid Grannies are so poorly lit that you're left trying to figure out what is actually happening in the frame. Horror can certainly benefit from darkness, but there is a difference between atmospheric shadows and simply not being able to see the damn movie. Some of the gore and creature work might have been fun if the camera had bothered to illuminate it properly.

There is something interesting lurking inside Rabid Grannies, and if the technical presentation weren't so consistently awful, it might have been a much more entertaining piece of low-budget horror. Instead, you're forced to spend too much of the running time deciphering dialogue and squinting at nearly invisible action. It's not completely devoid of charm, but the movie buries most of its potential beneath its own terrible production values.

Masters of the Universe accomplishes something bordering on sorcery: it takes the fundamentally ridiculous world of He-Man and turns it into an honest-to-God good movie. Not merely a passable adaptation or an amusing exercise in nostalgia, but a colorful, energetic fantasy adventure that understands exactly how dumb its source material is—and loves every musclebound, sword-raising minute of it.

The movie is loaded with fan service, but it rarely feels like a desperate parade of references. Its jokes about He-Man’s bizarre history, Eternia’s eccentric inhabitants and the franchise’s gloriously toyetic origins come from genuine affection. Longtime fans get plenty to recognize and laugh about, while newcomers aren’t required to study forty years of cartoons, comics and action-figure packaging to understand why a skull-faced wizard is yelling at a nearly naked blond man.

More importantly, it delivers as a proper action spectacle. The effects are excellent, the music is suitably enormous, and the set pieces possess the scale and imagination that a world like Eternia demands. The production design embraces bright colors, strange creatures and impossible machinery instead of sanding everything down into another gray, embarrassed blockbuster. It looks terrific, moves quickly and remembers that saving the universe should occasionally be fun.

The cast commits completely, with Jared Leto emerging as an especially terrific Skeletor. He is theatrical, threatening, funny and just unhinged enough to feel perfectly at home beneath that famous bone-white face. Against considerable odds, Masters of the Universe is more than a successful resurrection of He-Man—it is a wonderfully entertaining fantasy adventure made by people who understand that sincerity and silliness can share the same sword. By the power of Grayskull, they actually pulled it off.